


Scars

by imsfire



Series: Jyn Week 2018 Prompts [5]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Feels, Gen, Jyn's backstory, Maggots, Post-Battle of Scarif, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, honouring what's remembered in the body, slightly squicky stuff at one point, talking about scars and personal history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 20:00:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14755365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Jyn has so many scars, and each one is a record of something endured.





	Scars

**Author's Note:**

> For Jyn Appreciation Week 2018, day five; prompt, "Scars".

There were a stack of data-pads on the desk, and K-2SO sat next to Cassian peacefully, slicing them and muttering rude asides about the encryption software the previous owner had installed. 

Cassian was cleaning the blood-stains off his parka.  He sat up guiltily when K raised his head and announced “Jyn is coming.  I can hear her.”

“Krif, she’s gonna be furious about this.”  He shoved the coat under the desk and fumbled to shut the bottle of solvent, though the lingering smell would probably give him away.

“She’s in a bad mood,” K added.

“What? – how do you -?"  Shit.  She'd had her interview today.  "Are you sure?”

“I can hear her footsteps and she is not walking normally.  She’s walking her angry walk.  You know what I mean.”

Sadly he did, though he couldn’t hear a sound yet from the corridor.  The droid’s hearing was markedly sharper than any human’s.  And it was hardly unusual for something to leave Jyn angry.

If the Generals had rejected her request to transfer into Intelligence they were missing out.  But the hyper-cautious Cracken was even less of a fan of her methods and moods than General Draven.  It wasn’t entirely unexpected.

When Jyn walked in a few moments later he was braced to hear that she’d been turned down.  But she didn’t look angry or bitter at all, much less what would be worse, impassive, numbed out.  She looked, if anything, sad.  Sad and confused.

It was the grumpy walk, though.  He had to agree with K on that.

But sad and confused were not expressions he liked seeing on Jyn’s face.  She was usually so decisive; cool and quick to act, and unregretting.

She hung up her coat but kept her scarf and the quilted waistcoat on; sat down on the bed to untie her boots.  Saying nothing.  Cassian moistened his lips, waiting for her to lead in to a conversation.  He wanted to reach out and wrap her in his arms.  But it wouldn’t help, unless she asked him to.

K-2, head down, working innocently, gave the faint servo-hiss Cassian had come to know as his approximation of a sigh.  He put out a hand and rapped the droid’s arm warningly.

When Jyn looked up, they both met her gaze. 

“How’d it go?” Cassian asked.

She swallowed.  Yes, this wasn’t anger at all.  She was dealing with something unfamiliar, trying to find words.  She still struggled with that sometimes, had no confidence in her own verbal skill.  Cassian smiled at her, trying to signal eternal accepting support for whatever she might choose to tell him.

After a long second or ten, Jyn smiled back.  “Okay,” she said. “It went okay. They want me.  I’m in.”

“But that’s great news!” He started to rise and then held himself back.  Silenced a shout of pleasure.  It was painfully clear that either there was a _but_ , or she’d changed her mind.  Maybe there were conditions she didn’t want.  General Draven refusing to let the two of them serve together; Cracken insisting on her completing a full training programme for the sake of form-filling.  Cassian swallowed and waited.

“They offered me reconstructive surgery,” Jyn told him and K.

“Ah,” said K, in his worst _told you so_ voice.

She raised an eyebrow at the droid and her eyes came back to Cassian.

“Ah.  Yes.” He felt wrong-footed; surely she had anticipated this?  But it seemed she hadn’t. “That’s usual.  Removal of identifying marks.”

“Yeah.  General Draven explained.  I do have some scars.”

K-2 said “I’m sure you’ve noticed how few Cassian has.  Considering.”

“Considering?” Jyn bounced it back at him with a faint grin.

Cassian stepped in before they spent an hour sassing one another. “Considering the number of missions I’ve come through.”

“And your regrettable lack of concern for your own safety,” K said.

Jyn’s smile faded, slowly.  She was sitting on the edge of the bed platform, looking at her hands.  At the marks on her knuckles and wrists, the mortal signs of countless fights, legacy of her years of running, and more than one spell in prison.  Of days in binders, weeks of bad food and dirt and no medical treatment.  She’d lived through a lot of ugly situations. He’d never heard the full story.  They each respected the other’s dark places.

She was rubbing her right thumb slowly along one of the smallest scars, a pristine white crescent running right into the nailbed on her ring finger.  After a moment she said “I never really thought about it.  But of course, yeah, you’ve had this, haven’t you?”

He bit his lip and nodded.  “Yes." And then, because he had to be honest with her, because that was the bargain he'd made and would keep till the end "More than once.  In fact, many times.”

“Ah.”

“It’s – it’s not difficult surgery, it doesn’t take long, most of it.  Some was even done under local anaesthesia.”  He wanted so desperately to reassure her, somehow, because she looked and sounded so disheartened, and he didn’t know why.  She was transferring into Intelligence, they ought to be celebrating...

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Jyn said. “Some of the Pathfinders have _so many_ scars.  People like Bodhi, too.  Life-changing injuries, implants, bionics, and they get just the basics.  Why should I get something better?”  She pulled a face. “I mean, I _know_ why, he explained, yeah – but it just – it doesn’t seem right.”

“I know,” he told her.  Because he did, sweet life he did. “Another person has to live with permanent disfigurement, who was maybe beautiful and beloved once; and yet someone like me gets a dozen perfect skin grafts, because we need to cover every scrape and scratch.”

He could reach out now, at last, to take the hand she was holding out to him.  She’d taken off her gloves before she came in.  He held her fingers, warm but getting cooler in the chilly air.  He pressed them tightly.

“It isn’t _every scrape and scratch_ ,” K said, correcting him. “Only the ones on visible skin.  If someone gets to see his spine,” he added to Jyn “things have probably gone too far for saving anyway.”

Jyn ignored him.  “I ought to be pleased, shouldn’t I?” she said. “I’ve wanted this for a while and now I’m getting it.  I'll be serving alongside you.  It’s good, isn’t it?”

“It’s wonderful.  I’m really, really pleased.”

Cassian pulled her hands up and held them to his lips.  Placed a small kiss on each bruise and each freckle, on the strong blue veins, and finally on each scar.  The myriad layered ones scumbled on her knuckles, the little brown one on the forefinger, the tiny sickle moon mark Jyn had been chafing.  The broad puckered ones on her wrists.

“How did you get this?” he asked. “The little one there?” He kissed the crescent in her nailbed again by way of illustration. 

K said tartly “She knows which one you mean,” and Jyn chuckled gently.  Cassian smiled against her skin.

“That one?” she said. “That was a bite from a baby corn-rat when I was seven.  Just after we moved to Lah’mu.  The adults left us alone but the babies were curious and so was I…”

“And this one?” The brown scar.  It had a faintly rough texture.  He traced it with a fingertip before touching it with his lips.

“Burn.  Cookfire.  Saw liked everyone to take turns cooking, fair division of labour and all that.  Some people were better at it than others.”

“And you?”

“I was –“ Jyn shrugged - “middling, I suppose.  I can make a good stew.  And - ham-and-eggs, nuna fricassee, that kind of thing.  Don’t ask me to bake bread, though.  I bake roof-tiles.  Like terracotta, burnt solid.”  Her eyes went quiet suddenly, looked into the distance, far beyond the wall facing her.  A smile ghosted by on her face and vanished in momentary grief.  Then she blinked, and came back. “Long time ago.”

She detached her hands from his and held them out, turning them, displaying the shackle-marks on her wrists. “You know how I came by those.” Cassian nodded. 

With a sudden decisiveness that was hearteningly like her usual self, Jyn stretched back her arms and wriggled out of her vest.  Quickly she pulled up her left shirt-sleeve. “Then there’s these.”

The spattering of little round marks, that ran across the side of her arm and round her back to the shoulder blade.  Each one slightly pocked-in, like finger-marks on the side of a pot.  The skin inside each circle was smooth, shiny, with a faintly raised edge.  His best guess was some kind of projectile weapon, firing salt-shot maybe.  He didn’t know when, but it had to have been later than childhood; none of the circles was stretched at all, so they dated to after she’d stopped growing.

“I’ve wondered about those,” he said, keeping his tone light. 

“Got them on Onderon.  Blue fleecemoth.  They lay their eggs on banzy-grass and if you walk through a patch they stick.  You know what active missions are like, washing every day isn’t exactly a priority.  The eggs hatch on your skin and the maggots –“ Jyn poked at one of the little hollows as he sucked in a shocked breath. “We all got them. Used to kill ‘em with alcohol.  Or ethylene, or kerosene if we had it.  Splash it on, they curl up and drop out.  But – scars.” She waved her hand in vague illustration. “Least I managed not to get them infected.”

She glanced quickly up at him; he’d pulled his expression into calm again, just in time.  Just like his own scars, long-hidden now, each mark was a record of something done, something endured. 

She smiled, and went on. “The one over my ear was on Onderon too; someone trying to slice my head open ‘cause I cheeked him.  Trying to create a distraction.  Managed it, too.  I was ten.” She pointed at her right side. “Big one on my ribs was a knife fight when I was twelve.  Messy.  It should never have got that serious but – well, Magva stopped it before I ripped the guy open.  So no harm done in the end.  Small round one here –“ patting the side of her waist, just in front of her left kidney – “blaster-bolt ricocheted.  Outside a bank, on Shabila.  I was eighteen.  Wasn’t planning to rob it or anything…  And - most of the rest I guess you know.”

“Guess I might, yes.” He stroked the backs of her hands, encouraging her to go on just the same.

“The one on my knee is from Scarif, and the one on my cheek, here.  The wrist scars – can’t even remember the first place I got shackled –“ which he doubted, but if that’s how she felt the story he’d go with it – “anyway they just got worse over time, till Wobani and then Yavin 4.  That’s the last time anyone put me in binders.  And the rest of the ones on my hands – d’you know, I haven’t a clue where most of them come from?  Just - years of stuff.  Accumulation.”

“Accumulation that made you.” Cassian turned over her hands and kissed her knuckles again. “Even if they remove every mark, it won’t change the reality.  Who you are.  What your scars honour, what they record.”

Jyn took a slow deep breath and let it out. “I know.  It’s going to be odd, looking at myself and not seeing things I’ve got so used-to.  But I daresay it’ll be okay.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“And I’m going to work with you.  Draven thinks we’ll make a good team.”

“Really?” he said in surprise.

“Well…” She grinned; and she was beginning to relax, and beside them K-2 was making his sighing noise again as she reached up to rumple Cassian’s hair. “He wasn’t convinced at first.  But I - persuaded him.  Personal trust, complementary skill-sets, that sort of thing.  Plus I‘m one of the few people other than you who can handle working with K.” And the grin broadened at last into sheer delight. “I’m joining Intelligence, Cassian!”

“Yes.” She was going to be right at his side.  His warrior, his fire, his hope.  It would be terrifying; and heaven. “Yes you are!”

She stood and pulled him to his feet, into her embrace.


End file.
